estelle
by constant gardener
Summary: tom and diana have a late night chat. contains finale spoilers. one shot. tom diana.


**estelle**

_constant gardener, 2007. _

**rating: **light language, grief.

**notes: **all episodes of S4 and spoilers for the season finale. i don't own anyone. sadly. all credit of the characters goes to scotty peters and ira behr. i don't wish to infrige these marvelous creatures in any way, shape, or form. i only hope to return them in better state than i found them.

**summary: **tom and diana have a late night talk.

**credits: **i dedicate this story to a dear friend of mine whom i champion above all else. i adore her with all my heart, she is my loveliest of friends and patient shepard, my muse above all else. so i dedicate this story that was written with a light hand and much reverence to her.

* * *

Tom has spent the last four months thinking that anyone he loves will disappear, and there'll be no hope in finding her. Unfortunately, he has been proven right more than once that this thought is not an irrational fear. It is his reality and he lives with it every day. 

Tom sits atop the windowsill seat with an alarming decree of patience spread across his features. He's numb in a certain aspect, yet bruised in a way that is deep. He's crying but he's not sure why. Just because the feeling is wrong in his gut; where it presses, in a place that he can't touch nor heal. Tom thinks about his day and how difficult his life has been since the war started. He weeps more. He's just lost a sibling.

All that is cruel in the world seems to lie at his feet. Peering up at him with large cold eyes. He feels the world is waiting to envelop him and never let go. He feels empty and tired. Like he's fought not one war, but many. He reminisces about time and the way it just refuses to simply stand still. Not even for a moment.

He covers his eyes with the palms of his hands, willing away his burning tears. He has the house phone in his lap that wouldn't cease to stop ringing until he finally cut off the receiver. Old friends wanting to know details to gossip about at the next Saturday's social. Not-so-close family members pressing about funeral arrangements and specific dates as to make sure they didn't conflict with previous commitments. When one is gone, this is all that is left. Mess and the pity of others.

He has already called Diana. She's on her way. He put Kyle and Shawn to bed; distraught head cases he would take better care of in the morning. Now he waits with incoherent thoughts. All alone in his own world where it is bleak.

* * *

The phone call came at nearly eleven o'clock. Diana had been on her way home from NTAC, driving wildly in an attempt to out run her sobs. The battle had finally been lost today when she, and the rest of her team, had been struck by the Promicin bug. She had gotten an ability and everything she had sacrificed had become, in seconds, merely menial. 

As she had driven home, before her cell phone rang, she had thought of all the ways her life would change then. She thought about how sorely she would miss being normal. She thought about how her daughter would become inferior in her eyes. And--most importantly, she wondered what she would say to God when he showed his face.

Tom's call had been the perfect intervention from driving herself right over the side of a bridge. His voice had been the sound of a man that she had never met before. It had been so heartbreakingly poignant, that the illegal U-turn she had made and the drive home were tucked so far away in her conscious that she no longer remembers.

* * *

Diana enters Tom's house without a key or a knock at the door. She feels so violated that she suddenly has no sense of boundary. She sprints quietly up his steps. She's never made it this far in his house; to the second floor, rounding the corner to this bedroom. Not once, with this particular feeling in her veins. Like she wouldn't mind ever coming back down. 

There is no need to open another door. His room's hanging wide open, beckoning any kind of company it can get. And she's it. Diana sighs sorrowfully, seeing her friend sitting there. Audaciously close to the edge that a window becomes an alternate. He looks so helpless that a single tear rolls down her cheek.

"T-Tom…," she breathes. Her lips aren't even touching she's so parched for happiness. Tom turns around and immediately squints his eyes to make her out in the dark. This mental search brings relief to Diana. He's not willing to jump from that window yet. "I got here as fast as I could."

As she steps into the moonlight, Tom offers her a hand. She takes it and he leads her to an empty spot in front of him on the sill. "I'm sorry to call you so late." He whimpers through every word and for the first time Diana knows what it feels like to see a lover hurt. "I know…-I know you still haven't seen Maia. And--I'm sure you want to get home to her."

"Maia's a big girl. She'll be fine." Diana doesn't know this for a fact. Maia could be emotionally in worse shape than she is but she can wait to find out for sure. Diana gulps down a few loose sobs and shrugs her shoulders, "Was there something that you needed?"

"I-I…," Tom's chin drops and his eyes avert to the floor. He seems embarrassed and he shakes lightly out of nerve. "I needed someone to sit with me, for awhile." He moves his eyes directly into hers. He doesn't mean to offend her. "The phone wouldn't stop ringing. I had to---to take it off the hook. And Shawn wouldn't stop crying and I didn't know what to say to him." Tom's mind had flooded back to Shawn as a little boy, trying to cope with the fact that his father would never again walk through their front door. "How do you tell a kid their Mom is never coming back?"

Diana bites her lower lip--being this vulnerable is the worst sensation she's ever felt. She can't imagine the bulk of this unwanted responsibility. For a brief second, she prays that whomever gives the news of her own passing to Maia is a strong person. "He'll be okay, Tom. Maybe not now, but he will be okay."

Tom reaches for her hand blindly in the dark but he grasps it. His eyes are so flooded with tears that his pupils are non-existent. "He might be, but I won't." He feels ashamed of himself for crying in front her. He thinks he is making her endure some kind of guilt. But she's not.

She understands the regret that lingers in the back of both his mind, and hers. She gets it more than anyone that they've lost but to see the defeat in his face drives her crazy. "Tom. We've spent four years of our lives hoping."

"What?" He stares at her, through wetness, confused.

"We've spent four years of our lives hoping for something, and we never knew what. We were allies with our enemies, Tom. You aided your Healing Nephew, protected your Prophetic Son, whilst I tucked in my Precognitive Daughter. As we sat at our desks, we waited for the end of it all. But--tell me--what the hell we were _hoping_ for?" Diana clenches his hands against hers.

It is the question that he is looking for an answer to. And--he has been, ever since that white ball of light caught his eye on that television screen. He can't say anything. She's just validated everything he's felt that day---and maybe more.

"Maybe we were hoping for this." She counters. Tom immediately pulls his hands from her and shakes his head in disagreement. Hoping for something, yes, but not this. Not this pain.

"I never wanted my sister to die, Diana!"

"Not this!" She opens her arms out as if she welcomes the entire room in her embrace. "_This_." She then encloses her hands to shape an invisible soccer ball. She's showing him a space that is minimal but meaningful. "You and me. Right now. Kyle asleep in his bed. Maia, safe. We were hoping to _change _something. And we did. This world is at our finger tips."

Tom nods, clarification comes in many shapes and forms. Though this reality is still far fetched to him. "We don't know anything about these abilities, Diana. We don't know how to use them," he sniffles. "Hell, we don't even know what they are."

Diana smiles, her cheeks stained, but looking hopeful at him. "We are going to learn, Tom. Whether or not we want to. We don't have much of a choice, we can only _hope_ it turns out for the best."

In time, he will believe it and come to know it as the truth . He'll need reassuring most of the way and a good hand to pat his back. "We're going to lose more people." He finds her hand again. He doesn't know what is it--her gentle stare or the moon beating down on the crown of her red hair--that makes him long to touch her. He just needs to feel her to make sure she's real.

"Maybe, but we'll lose them together." She tilts her head to the side, the moon now hitting her cheek.

"We could lose each other."

"Garrity makes a nice partner." She laughs between sniffles. Those eyes of hers light him from the inside and if she can get him to stop crying for a moment they might fill him with delight.

Tom actually chuckles too, but he's still crying. He won't stop for a few more days and it's just the grief talking. No joke will make him forget his sister or the rest who will follow her but it comforts him now and that's all he needs to carry on.

It's silent for a moment. Tom still has her hand. "Do you want to know something?"

"What?"

He smiles the way she smiles. It's the kind that is not rightly a smile at all. It's a substitute for something bigger that will come some day. It's a rain-check kind of smile, a preview of the real thing. The best you can do through unbelievable sadness. "Amongst this _hoping_ that we've done…"

He leans in closer and surprisingly she doesn't pull away. She just stares at him, that not-quite smile decorating her features. He gets so close to her face that if he wanted to he could literally breathe her own air. He slides his hands from her grasp and glides them through her auburn hair. She longs into his gray eyes. "I-I, uh. I was _hoping_ for you too." His words came out as a deep rooted sob, but they were words no less.

More tears came rolling along his cheeks. But something _had_ changed. She was there to kiss them away. Tom has spent the last four months thinking that anyone he loves will disappear, and there'll be no hope in finding her. At some point he will have to accept that this is an irrational fear and there are more important things to worry about.

* * *

estelle means _hope._

leave me lovely reviews, please. -cg.


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